Meet grandma’s new friend: her robot

For the aged, social isolation can be a problem with many unfortunate consequences. Loneliness, for instance, can increase the risk of depression, overall mortality, long-term illness and vastly reduce the quality of life.

Combatting the golden years with technology

Fortunately, issues faced by aging populations are often top of mind among technology innovators who are developing countless applications and services to combat the physical and emotional challenges of the “golden years.”

Introducing ElliQ

Take, ElliQ, for example. ElliQ is a robotic companion that learns its owner’s behavior patterns and then suggests activities, music, videos, and ebooks to engage with family and friends to connect with through social media. In short order, robots have evolved from bumping around our floors vacuuming up dust and dirt to serving as human companions.

This is all thanks to clever engineering combined with relentless silicon and software improvements that are enabling more and more AI and machine learning applications to be done in edge devices.

ElliQ, which is designed by Intuition Robotics, use Arm-based technology in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 system on a chip, with machine learning functionality enhanced by an accelerator. It’s all done in service of combatting one of the biggest problems of aging populations: Loneliness.

This is just one example of not only advancing applications through machine learning but leveraging and better compute power within edge devices to improve responsiveness, security and the user experience.

AI/ML at Arm TechCon 2018

It's also an example of the kind of innovation in AI/machine learning and edge computing that can be found in this year’s Arm TechCon, which is being held Oct. 16-18, 2018, in the San Jose Convention Center.

These are just three of 18 Arm TechCon sessions devoted to edge computing and machine learning –the most-packed track of any of the eight Arm is highlighting at the event. Other topics include automotive, system design methodology, embedded software development and trust and security.

As the pace of design quickens in the IoT era, it’s more important than ever to stay current, so come join us this fall. If you need more reasons, check out our justification toolkit. There are resources including sample letters to your manager to help you come join us in San Jose. I’ll see you in October.

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